Dora news: July 18, 2018

We are having another hot July day with little chance for rain. The few showers in the last few weeks all missed us. My son, Jon, has been watering the garden, but it seems slow to produce.
We had a party here on Sunday to celebrate my great-grandson Levi Hollingshad’s 10th birthday.
I had another great-granddaughter born July 3 at Ozarks Medical Center. Her parents are Nick and Court-ney Stevens of Thayer. Her name is Olivia Grace. She has a sister, Mia, who is 5.
The Family Life Church’s VBS was held recently. Ball Church of Christ will have their VBS Aug. 6-8 from 7 to 9 p.m. each night.
Norman and Megan LeBlanc and their three daughters came for a visit last Friday. They have moved from Hawaii to a Texas air base. They are glad to be back in the continental U.S.
The Dora Quilt Club has two new members, Mary Johnston and Tambria Griswold. They are both quilters, but Tambria had only done machine quilting instead of hand quilting.
This was the first year in a long time that we didn’t celebrate the Fourth of July here at home with food and fireworks, but we enjoyed all of it after Bible study at the Ball Church on Wednesday evening. This was also the first year that we haven’t had the Uhlmann Reunion since I have lived here. We were married in 1950, and they had the reunion long before that. I guess when the older ones pass away the next generation may not be interested in their ancestry.
I have a Chinese elm tree in my backyard, and the Emerald Beetles have eaten almost all of the leaves off of it. Such a mess! They came down like rain. My daughter bought two traps at the hardware store and hung them in the tree to trap the beetles, and they really worked. We collected four plastic bags full. I’m sure there will be more next year.
We have to constantly fight something here on the farm. First, it was multiflora rose bushes, then musk thistles, and now the locust trees that have big thorns, and they cause a lot of flat tires on the tractors. I guess we can blame Adam (Genesis 3:18).